Probe into ‘secret US prisons’

The Council of Europe is investigating allegations of secret US prison camps on Polish and Romanian soil, even while the European Commission has complained of a lack of authority to investigate human rights abuses.

The so-called black camps could prove a test of the relative strengths of the EU and the CoE in protecting human rights.

On Monday (7 November) the legal affairs and human rights committee of the CoE's parliamentary assembly appointed Dicky Marty, a Swiss parliamentarian, to investigate the allegations, made by the Washington-based Human Rights Watch. Alvaro Gil-Robles, the CoE's commissioner for human rights, said: "Such practices would constitute...further proof of the crisis of values that the use of certain methods in the fight against terrorism is provoking."

Writing in European Voice, the CoE's secretary-general Terry Davis argues that the Council of Europe is best placed to be the leading institution in Europe for the protection of human rights.